Books and Bikes

At the Los Angeles Book Festival, book lovers answered this sign's question. Photo by Ly.

By Helen Ly

If
downtowners did Sunday right, it was a day of books and bikes under the sun. The 18th Annual Los Angeles Times Book Festival pulled in bibliophiles from
around Southern California, and many were greeted with the sight of cycling enthusiasts taking
over the city streets for the sixth CicLAvia.

Later in the day, they got to know each other intimately when they shared crammed cars on the Expo Line.

At the book Festival, attendees got off Nooks and wandered the USC campus filled with musicians, poets, cooks, celebrities, and lectures.

Like the
CicLAvia throng just pointing their bike toward the downtown or the ocean, I wandered the book Festival to discover something.

Because of
that, I ended up at the interesting
"Living and Writing in Los Angeles" panel that had USC faculty sharing their
distinct perspective of their ongoing city experiences. Different in voice, they all shared
an interest in the hidden aspects of Los Angeles, or what USC history professor William Deverell calls, a "historical velocity."

People may view
Los Angeles as a place without history and it’s not true, he said. The "documentary
record here is deep" he explained, and "great chunks of it rest in
peoples' garage...everyday they come out and weave the human tapestry."

Also on the panel was British born
Richard Rayner, novelist, journalist, and lecturer at USC, who has lived Los
Angeles for the last 20 years and admits he still doesn't drive, whcih gives him a different view of the city.

He also recalled the time he once
took the RTD at 2 a.m. from Santa Monica to Downtown. The ride was "a
zoo," he said, so he got off the bus. Just as he stepped off a passenger
shouted at him: "Nerdy! Don't miss the magic mystery tour."

That was the
moment he fell in love with the place, he said.

Like Deverell
noted about history being hidden, a cultural side of the Angeleno is also there.
It’s ignored by anyone who is blinded by Los Angeles myth.